WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 202\
But also, Warnock in Georgia: Every county in Texas shifted blue last week.
Meanwhile, Kansas, home of Democratic (lady) governors, decided to let a Democratic senator escape the borders of the state.
In those two states, religious messaging was suddenly back in the year's election campaigns—religious messaging from Democratic candidates! Also, God had a plan in Texas, the governor-elect has said:
“I am a daughter of the Rio Grande Valley, where the people embody the work ethic and values of our great state, where no one would have imagined that one day, a little girl from the RGV would stand before you here as the next governor of the greatest state, Texas. But God had a plan, and the people of Texas had a plan, too.”
In terms of straight-ahead Americana, that was straight-ahead American speech. When Lauren Jackson sought to explain in the New York Times, she moved it on over to Georgia:
The Bible Chapter That Helps Explain the New Christian Left
Senator Raphael Warnock, a pastor from Georgia, has called himself a “Matthew 25 Christian” for years. It’s his boilerplate, invoked in response to questions about health care, immigration and even Fidel Castro.
In the New Testament’s book of Matthew, chapter 25, Jesus tells his disciples that if they offer care to the most vulnerable in society, they are also offering devotion to him. “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” Jesus said, according to Matthew’s author. “I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”
It’s a famous passage of scripture...
In the recent political context, it starts with Senator Warnock, she says. That takes us over to Georgia, home state to Dr. King, who filled his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, with references to his devotion to "the love ethic of Jesus."
Democrats have sometimes been a bit stand-offish with respect to these realms. More than once, it could be that Blue American eyes have rolled in the face of such testimony.
In this way, denizens of Blue America have sometimes looked for ways to encourage political defeat. As she continues, Jackson starts to describe what the heck she's talking about:
(Continued from above)
It’s a famous passage of scripture. It’s also a favorite reference for the new wave of religious Democrats heading to Washington. James Talarico of Texas, Adam Hamilton of Kansas and Sarah Trone Garriott of Iowa all wove the verses into their campaigns—and won.
If Christian nationalism is a shorthand for the dominant religious politics of the right, Matthew 25 may be the key to understanding the new religious left.
[...]
Several of the new Christian Democrats regularly cite scripture, and Matthew 25 in particular. Talarico used it to argue “that health care is a human right.” Hamilton applied it to make the case for welcoming immigrants.
And so on from there.
Jackson is citing "the new religious left" which helped the Democratic Party romp to a 12-point win in deep red Texas, along with a 5-point win in a state which hadn't sent a Democrat to the Senate in almost a hundred years. This suggests that there may be electoral power in Matthew 25.
Lauren Jackson's role at the New York Times is a bit hard to define. Officially, she herself is "a deputy editorial director for newsletters and the host of Believing."
In turn, Believing is "a weekly newsletter about how people live religion and spirituality now." As for Jackson herself, she's a former Rhodes scholar who grew up Mormon in Arkansas, as we Americans sometimes do.
On its face, Talarico's win in Texas may have been most surprising of all the wins last week. He hardly looks the part of the giant-slayer who could subdue that big, brawling, deep red state.
In this second report in the New York Times, Ruth Graham starts to explain the power, the force, of the messaging—messaging which comes live and direct from long American experience:
What Talarico’s Win Reveals About Christianity in Texas
James Talarico, a onetime Sunday school teacher, opened his acceptance speech on Tuesday night with a Bible story.
“I’m reminded of that story from Scripture of a shepherd boy who goes up against a giant,” he told an ebullient crowd in Austin, Texas. In the end, of course, the shepherd boy defeats the well-armed Goliath with only a slingshot.
Mr. Talarico slew his own giant this week, ending decades of Republican control in Texas with a decisive win that carried multiple other Democrats in the state to victory. He did it in part by speaking easily and openly about how his Christian beliefs inform his politics, starting with the biblical command to love God and “love thy neighbor,” as the sign on his lectern read on Tuesday night.
Talarico is only 37, but he plainly knows his brief. By all accounts, he was able to speak to many different people in Texas—people who fit within a complex cultural framework.
"More than a quarter of adult Texans are self-described evangelicals," Ruth Graham notes in her report. But then again, also this:
[T]he state is also home to progressive Protestants like Mr. Talarico, millions of Catholics, and politically active Black congregations, including one in Dallas whose pastor was elected to Congress as a Democrat this week.
Mr. Talarico, an eighth-generation Texan and onetime seminarian, understood all that. His own grandfather, once a Baptist preacher, found himself on the “moderate” side when conservatives took over the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s and ’80s, a move masterminded in Texas. Mr. Talarico was raised in a church that has been known locally for its progressive activism for decades.
In a town hall hosted by CNN in October, a voter from his hometown of Round Rock, Texas, pressed him “Christian to Christian” about provocative past statements like “God is nonbinary.”
“Do you believe that the Bible is the absolute source of truth and God’s final authoritative word, even when our culture says otherwise?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Talarico answered.
We ourselves don't understand the cosmos that way. As a matter of fact, we can't say that we understand the cosmos at all! But should it bother us here, on this sprawling campus, if someone can preach the virtue of kindness the way this young candidate did?
We Americans! Our three Great Awakenings don't get discussed much, but they're stone-cold Americana. Religious belief has worked in various ways over time. With Talarico from Texas joining Warnock from Georgia, is a new morning upon us?
We see a well-known Texan, online in today's Times, offering this overview about such matters. Try to ignore that headline:
You May All Go to Hell, and Tommy Lee Jones Will Go to Texas
[...]Jones’s sense of humor reveals itself unexpectedly. Asked what he made of the dispute over a border wall in the Big Bend region, where Jones has spent considerable time both filming and living, he offered a characteristically terse, diplomatic response: “I don’t like bigotry, and I love people.”
No.
ReplyDeleteSomerby is using the word Americana when he means simply American. He should stop doing that because it diminishes religion to reduce it to Americana when it occupies a greater place in the lives of people who are religious. It is disrespectful to do that.
ReplyDeleteYou are imbecilla.
DeleteGo be an asshole somewhere else.
DeleteThe NY Times has a staff member who encounters the world in religious terms. Does that mean the rest of Democrats are doing so? Not necessarily. Somerby doesn't bother researching the percentages of people on the left who are religious and what their faith might be. He grabs Texas and uses it to support a thesis that there is a new religious fervor on the left. Without evidence. Of course, that will appeal to those who are religious, but it doesn't get at the reality of what happened in TX or elsewhere in the Democratic party or the left more generally. Lazy as usual.
ReplyDeleteStill, Matthew 25 is a heck of a read.
DeleteThe term Goats and Sheep is used in psychology to classify people by their religious beliefs. It is unfortunate that the Bible itself assigns non-believing to the left, as it calls left-handed people possessed by Satan because lefties are devil-worshippers. That is ancient superstitution expressed in the bible but persists in things like Somerby's claim that lefties mock religion and cannot be religious as Talarico and Warnock are obviously. That encourages the right's attacks on left wing believers, which is as unfair as many of their other attacks. It is obvious why Somerby is writing this shit today.
DeleteAs an lefty atheist I approve their message - actually quoting Christ's teachings instead of only dwelling in the Old Testament like creepy ass hateful Republicans. There are no quotes of Christ condemning gays or Drag Queens. No hate directed at the others. Republicans are so screwed up on Religion, getting it totally backwards, that of course it is easy for a real Christian to connect with both the Religious and the progressive. Go team kindness. I also like that the Christian Right hates the last two Popes for their kindness. WTF? Republicans are fake Christians who will not repeat Christ's kind words. For an insightful and fun explanation of this, without the we blues sometimes do this that and the other bullshit of Somerby, try reading this: "Separation of Church and Hate" Book by John Fugelsang.
ReplyDeleteIs this comment "mocking" religion? I don't think so. It is complaining about the hypocrisy on the right, not their religiosity. This is not the example of mocking that Somerby claims exists among us blues. It is a non-believer explaining his own objections to religion as practiced by the right wing.
DeleteThe Trump right wing does not follow the teachings of Jesus, it's leadership can't even begin to deal with the Ten Commandments let alone the teachings of Christ. Take Trump and Paxton, please...
DeleteThere is self-mockery in the right's use of religion to justify things like banning drag queen story hours and furries.
DeleteWe find that this entire column was written to justify Somerby's coy name-drop of his ex college room-mate Tommy Lee Jones, who doesn't mind religion.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is this sentence, which is repeated in Somerby's essay:
"We Blues! We've sometimes mocked religious people. On the extremely rare occasion, We Blues can almost seem to have tiny small shortcomings too."
Where is any example, much less an analysis, of the extent to which we blues mock religion or religious people?
And when Somerby refers to blue shortcomings as "tiny small" in his ironic voice, it is still a criticism of the left. It is his ritual criticism with which he ends nearly every essay he writes at his blog. All people have shortcomings, depending on what measuring stick is used, because people vary. Christian religion itself does not advocate for human perfection but for forgiveness and God's mercy. So why is Somerby constantly chiding blues in this non-specific broad-spectrum way? Because his mission is to blame blues and excuse and promote reds. Today it is Lauren Jackson being promoted to the left, as if we were not the ones protesting the assault on Muslim candidates in the midterms, by those good Christians on the right.